Third-party voices sorely missed in debates

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In “Beyond debates” (Ideas, Oct. 21], Leon Neyfakh offers several proposals, one more fanciful than the next, for making the presidential debates more useful to the voters. But he fails to mention the most obvious way: include the candidates — all of the candidates. Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson both have millions of supporters, are on the ballot in more than enough states to win in the Electoral College, and represent parties that have been fixtures of national politics for many years.

Even if they have little chance of winning, their inclusion in the debates would give expression to issues and policies that are of the utmost importance but have gone unmentioned by the anointed front-runners. To cite just one example, Stein addresses the threat of catastrophic climate change head on, but no hint of it could be gleaned from the debates as they were constituted.

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